Swapnil Joshi on his OTT stint: It was a big and calculated risk

Having done television and films for years now, switching to the web was not something that Swapnil Joshi was immediately on board about. The actor reveals that he took his time to warm up to the medium and be open about opportunities on the web.

“It has been an enriching experience. I was getting opportunities to do web in the last 5 years , but I was always thinking about whether I should do it or not,” he shares.

Explaining the reason behind his doubts, the actor says, “What I do in Marathi films is the boy next door and on TV, I have this comedy actor image. So when if I have to do the same thing on web then why it didn’t make any sense because why would the audience want to watch me doing the same thing on a different platform.”

The 43-year-old, who starred in two seasons of web series Samantar, admits the OTT audience is very different from the TV and film audiences.

“I wanted to make sure that I am giving them something that satisfies their hunger with this new taste. It was a big and calculated risk. I kept saying no to a lot of web projects. Some days it was easy, some days it was difficult because the money was good and the role was good but they were repetitive that I had already done on TV and in films,” he says.

With the success of his web outing, Joshi is in a much confident place and ready to take up more projects.

“It was a very nervous journey. Ab sur sahi lag gaya toh I can say that I am, glad I waited and so on. I took my chance with fate, and I was rewarded. OTT has revolutionized the way we watch content in the last five years. It is given you the freedom of timeline, languages, barriers and sexuality. It has broken down a lot of shields in the right sense of the term,” he concludes.